Composer of the revolution: Scriabin’s idea of the Mysterium - the total work of art

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that Alexander Scriabin with his conception of the total work of art, named Mysterium, unconsciously provided the artistic vision of revolutionary claims, anticipating the October Revolution of 1917. Since the first decade of the 20th century, the revolutionary conscience was a singular feature of the Russian intelligentsia, so the concept of Mysterium was, in such social climate, a concept of force that prompted the artist to seek a better world. Just like avant-garde artists - whose actions are an intervention in social systems - in his Mysterium Scriabin emphasized the need for a transformation of the world through art. Bearing this in mind, the musicological interpretation of Mysterium here is made with the aim of positioning Scriabin as a modernist subject. The insights into the composer?s responses to socio-political reality - both within Scriabin?s philosophical and creative narratives - refer to the demands of the revolutionaries for the collective/sobornost. This study shows that those demands were, in the case of Scriabin, shaped as the idea of the utopian function of art.